---

High Speed Rail

Does my right hon. Friend accept that, whatever the merits of the proposal as presently drafted, the choice of the Euston terminus would have a devastating impact on my constituents? The railway engineers would treat it as though it were a greenfield site, but greenfield it is not. Does he acknowledge that the present proposals would involve six or seven blocks of affordable housing being demolished, and a small park being virtually concreted over? Will he ask the engineers to go back to their computers, and to be more imaginative in getting a lot more of what is needed into the existing curtilage of Euston station, a great deal of which is presently wasted? Will he also bear it in mind that, when the self-same engineers came up with the proposal to put the high speed link from the channel tunnel under King's Cross station, I suggested that they should use St. Pancras? That was a much better idea than the one the engineers came up with.